The Plight of Refugees . . .
World Refugee Day is supposed to draw attention to the 68.5 million displaced people in the world – instead it shows intolerance.
Last Wednesday marked the United Nations’ World Refugee Day 2018, and it was meant to show the world the challenges and strength that millions of refugees need to face their new lives. The UN’s refugee agency says that 68.5 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes. However, instead of it being a week where world leaders showed their compassion and recognised the need to offer more help, President Donald Trump decided to separate migrant families at the US-Mexico border, by taking the parents into custody and putting their screaming, frightened children into cages. The policy, which the administration said was necessary, was supposed to deter illegal immigration. President Trump wanted to prosecute all adults who tried to cross the US-Mexico border illegally. Many migrants were planning to seek asylum in the US, but Trump kept to his word and soon put a stop to that. He is still planning to build the border wall and the fate of these families is not yet known.
Fortunately, there are a lot of compassionate people in the world, including the president’s wife, Melania Trump, who caused a public outcry when they saw the psychological effect this was having on the children and forced Trump to reverse this inhumane policy.
Also during the week of World Refugee Day, Italy and Malta refused to let a boat, the Aquarius, with 629 migrants on board, dock in their ports. Italy’s Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, said that: "Italy cannot be Europe’s refugee camp" and wrote on twitter the hashtag #closethedoors. Fortunately, the Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sanchez, allowed the Aquarius, with 123 unaccompanied minors, 11 small children and seven pregnant women, to dock. We cannot even begin to imagine how these people must have felt to be sent away from Italy and have to travel another 1,300 kilometres to reach Spain. Salvini claimed "victory" over not accepting the refugees and has now decided to count Roma people – to imprison the illegal ones or send them away.
It doesn’t take a genius to realise that the refugee and migrant crisis is getting worse and sometimes seems completely out of control. Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia – and people are starting to become very intolerant. But what if it were you? Isn’t everyone entitled to search for a better life for themselves and their families? Wouldn’t we do exactly the same thing, if we found ourselves in their situation? I know I would.
There are many famous examples of refugees who have left their mark in the worlds of science, art, politics and sport: Albert Einstein, the famous physicist, moved to America in 1933 as he and thousands of other Jews fled persecution in Nazi Germany; Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, fled Nazi-controlled Austria in 1938 and moved to London, as did his grandson, Lucian Freud, the Berlin-born painter who fled to London in 1933, aged ten. The former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was 15 years old when he fled Nazi Germany in 1938. The late singer, Freddie Mercury, fled Zanzibar, where he was born, during the 1964 revolution and became very successful in the UK. The super model and widow of David Bowie, Iman, was forced to flee war-torn Somalia in 1972; the American actress, Mila Kunis, fled her native Ukraine in 1991, after facing years of anti-Semitism, and singer-songwriter Gloria Estefan’s family fled Cuba in 1960. The list is endless. But as long as war and poverty continue, this problem will not go away.